It’s the good, the bad and the
ugly this week. Enough Said is a cute one, Fifth
Estate the badly done Assange story, and ugly, well that would be Jackass presents Bad Grandpa. Who knew I
would be laughing at fart jokes this week, but hey it surprised me.
(My movie Pick
of the week)
Enough
Said ★★★ ½
Opens in
Australia: 14th November, 2013
Other
Countries: Release Information
Perth, Australia: See at Luna Cinemas
OUR THOUGHTS
This is a pretty cute film. I like the setup and it’s rather prophetic in
that the character, Eva, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, keeps hassling the love
interest Albert (James Gandolfini) about his weight. As we know, sadly,
Gandolfini died this year from a heart attack.
I am struggling to say a lot about Enough
Said, though, because it’s a film like most of these indie romantic
comedies… the acting is wonderful, its good, not great, you won’t hate it, you
won’t love it. You probably won’t even remember it in a year.
After I saw it, it created the
question for me: Should film going patrons pay the same price for this film,
that clearly didn’t cost much to make, as Thor
The Dark World costing hundreds of millions? I don’t think so. And that’s why indie films like Enough Said will come and go with few
people seeing them, which is a shame because they deserve their audience but
that audience should be charged accordingly.
STUDIO BLURB
Directed by
Nicole Holofcener, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, James Gandolfini (in one of
his final film roles), Catherine Keener & Toni Collette.
A divorced
and single parent, Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) spends her days enjoying work as a
masseuse but dreading her daughter's impending departure for college. While at
a party she meets Albert (James Gandolfini) - a sweet, funny and like-minded
man also facing an empty nest. As their romance blossoms, Eva befriends
Marianne (Catherine Keener), her new massage client. Marianne is a beautiful
poet who seems "almost perfect" except for one prominent quality: she
spends much of her time complaining about her ex-husband’s annoying habits.
Suddenly it all comes together as Eva realizes that Albert is Marianne’s ex and
finds herself doubting her own relationship with Albert as she learns the
“truth” about him from Marianne!
Jackass
presents Bad Grandpa ★★★ ½ stars
Opens in
Australia: 14th November, 2013
Other
Countries: Release Information
OUR THOUGHTS
How can “so wrong” be so right. My
first thought when I received the invite to Bad Grandpa was, Nope, not my cup of tea, but I’ve a
teenage boy and I thought, maybe he would like it. So, I relented and toodled off to the preview
expecting to bemoan a waste of time while I sat through stupid antics by
idiotic people. Well, wasn’t I surprised?
It is very funny, although some of the gags didn’t hit home as much as
the filmmakers thought they might.
Included are a couple of scenes so funny your stomach will hurt. The audience with us laughed uproariously
throughout. If you are Jackass fan add
an extra star to my review. Overall, not bad Mr Knoxville. I am still not a Jackass fan but Grandpa isn’t
so bad.
STUDIO BLURB
86 year-old Irving Zisman is on a journey across America with the most
unlikely companion, his 8 year-old Grandson Billy in "Jackass Presents:
Bad Grandpa." This October, the signature Jackass character Irving Zisman
(Johnny Knoxville) and Billy (Jackson Nicoll) will take movie audiences along
for the most insane hidden camera road trip ever captured on camera. Along the
way Irving will introduce the young and impressionable Billy to people, places
and situations that give new meaning to the
term childrearing. The duo will encounter male strippers, disgruntled child
beauty pageant contestants (and their equally disgruntled mothers), funeral
home mourners, biker bar patrons and a whole lot of unsuspecting citizens. (c)
Paramount
The
Fifth Estate ★★ ½
Opens in
Australia: 14th November, 2013
Other
Countries: Release Information
OUR THOUGHTS
I found this a very dull version of the Julian Assange
story. In fact, I am uncertain whether I
want to know more about this man. I’ve seen several films this year about him,
and nobody seems to have pinned down what he is really about. “Damages” scriptwriters quite blatantly used
Assange as a basis for their main antagonist in their last season. He comes
across as a creep who cares about nobody.
In this one, the writers offer a line suggesting he has Asperger’s. Yes Benedict Cumberbatch is good as Assange
in a creepy sort of way, but by the end of the film I felt like I’d seen a very
shallow take on a man who must be, in reality, a complicated, layered human
being. This is a very unsatisfying and one dimensional film that has a couple
of exciting bits and that’s it.
STUDIO BLURB
Triggering our age of high-stakes secrecy, explosive news leaks and the
trafficking of classified information, WikiLeaks forever changed the game. Now,
in a dramatic thriller based on real events, "The Fifth Estate"
reveals the quest to expose the deceptions and corruptions of power that turned
an Internet upstart into the 21st century's most fiercely debated organization.
The story begins as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and
his colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl) team up to become
underground watchdogs of the privileged and powerful. On a shoestring, they
create a platform that allows whistleblowers to anonymously leak covert data,
shining a light on the dark recesses of government secrets and corporate
crimes. Soon, they are breaking more hard news than the world's most legendary
media organizations combined. But when Assange and Berg gain access to the
biggest trove of confidential intelligence documents in U.S. history, they
battle each other and a defining question of our time: what are the costs of
keeping secrets in a free society-and what are the costs of exposing
them?"(c) Disney
What have you seen this
week? Did you find our comments helpful or do you disagree? Share your thoughts
with us.
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